Oracle is hooking more partners into its validated Linux configurations program in its efforts to cover the entire stack of components its customers might encounter when installing the open-source operating system, the company announced at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo on Aug. 16.
The Oracle Validated Configurations effort now will include Brocade, Cisco Systems and Pillar Data Systems as components of pre-tested and validated architectures that include software, hardware, storage and networking components.
"It's actually pretty significant," Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's vice president of Linux Engineering, told eWEEK in an interview.
"It rounds up the entire stack of hardware components. We had server and storage vendors, but we didn't have the pieces in the middle yet."
Oracle first unveiled its Validated Configurations effort, which it concocted in order to help customers accelerate and simplify their Oracle on Linux deployments, in June.
Read more here about Oracle's Validated Configurations effort.
Partners already in the mix include AMD, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Network Appliance, Novell, QLogic, Red Hat and Sun.
Oracle also on Aug. 16 published five new configurations.
They, along with previously published configurations, are available to subscribers of the Oracle Technology Network.
The new configurations are from HP, IBM and Dell, Coekaerts said, and they represent a "lot of work."
"Adding more partners is obviously a lot of work," he said. "We make sure they can integrate this stuff."
One thing that's important to Oracle, Coekaerts said, is to get partners to test new hardware models before they're released.
"We want to make sure they test this stuff before they release, so anything coming from Dell [et al.] is automatically tested," he said.
"It's basically impossible for our customers to order an old model. If there's a time delay of even a few weeks, it's too long for people with a critical need to go to production."
Based on customer feedback, Oracle is also drilling further down into the details of the configurations, he said.
"We'll give more details on why certain settings are needed and explain to them what we've tested to come to that conclusion," he said.
"There is a set of customers who said, 'We want to understand why you did this, why you disabled that, what the benefits are.'"
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